how useful is karma for not electronic tunes?

[newtonlkh]

Most of the demonstrations i've seen about karma are one electronic tunes.

After seeing the videos from Kay's site, i still don't quite know the different between it and arps.

How useful is it for acoustic instruments?

I lean towards alternative rock things. it would be best if if could be used to play bass, electric guitar, pads and lead with freedom...

i am not that good on keyboard skill so i am trying to seek help from karma.

Newton
Current M50 user

[X-Trade]

KARMA can be set up for strumming patterns or even to allow you to play a chord with your right hand and strum it by pressing any range of keys in the left hand.

It can generate bass phrases or anything else. It can also do drums and such.

Admittedly it is great for electronic music but also makes a very interesting 'auto accompaniment'-like feature, playing grooves and phrases along with your chords and playing which can be changed using the sliders/parameters and thus set up to groove differently for different 'scenes' or sections of your song.

It can also add movement to orchestral patches. For example a lot of rock keyboard players like to just hold a chord so even if you have some really realistic string samples it generally sounds unconvincing because there is no movement to the notes. KARMA can generate small movements of different instruments within and around your chord in an orchestral combi to provide that movement that makes it sound so much more real.

[newtonlkh]

thanks for your reply, is it advisible to manually create GEs for each song?

there are so much details i hope to know, but have to sit down in front of the machine several hours with the manual to figure out, instead of going to the store and throw in some chords...

i'm sorry to this many questions... but i really don't know how powerful is it...

like:

when using a 8 bar pattern, can i play a 9-bar pattern suddenly?

can i program different drum patterns for different part of the song?
can i add drum/bass fills whereever i like? or between changing of patterns (scenes?)

can it give more possibility in a combi than keyzone and velocity zone? like using cc to switch sounds, or automatically switch sounds by ge parameters...?

can it detect the chord type i am playing?
can it change the split point of a combi like logic's mainstage?

can it play countermelody between my playing?
can it play harmony line to my right hand melody, according to the chord played with left hand?

you know, the list is limitless when you want to do 4 musician's job with 2 hands, with control...

thanks!
Newton

[X-Trade]

thanks for your reply, is it advisible to manually create GEs for each song?

I think the general approach would be to create a GE for each type of part in a certain style. KARMA is more suited to when you don't know exactly what you want. A big feature of it is that musical characteristics of the note generation are given in the form of parameters - for example note density, duration, swing, repetition, and more complex things.
The 'scenes' are purely a set of these parameters for each of the four modules.

as a really basic example, you might have a 'straight rock' drum GE, and have it relatively normal (middle position) for the parameters, and then on your scene #2 the rhythmic complexity could be increased, and the swing of the bass guitar GE decreased. As a really simplistic example.
You can get a great variety out of just one GE so you don't necessarily need a different GE for each instrument part for each song. For example a lot of basslines and drum parts in a lot of music are characteristically similar.

The two places where this is really useful straight away is in electronic and dance music, as you say. It is great for DJ-types to be able to actually change the actual notes and rhythms by tweaking knobs rather than just changing the sound.
The other place where this is really useful is in composition, particularly when you are on a tight deadline and need for example drums or a bass part but don't have time to write one, you just have the chords. You can still come up with something relatively unique with KARMA without having to write the whole thing.

Another place where it comes in handy is like in the guitar or harp example. It can generate conditional-type triggering and other forms of complex note processing.

Your other questions, I can't answer all of them because I'm new to KARMA myself but I'll give you some ideas:

when using a 8 bar pattern, can I play a 9-bar pattern suddenly?

Not Sure

can i program different drum patterns for different part of the song?

I think so. Either way, it is more suited to not directly programming a pattern, just going in the general idea and varying it to produce different parts of a song. I'm not certain but I think you may be able to get a number of different rhythm 'patterns' into a single GE and switch between them though.

can i add drum/bass fills whereever i like? or between changing of patterns (scenes?)

I don't think so. If you have fills, they can probably be made to occur at convenient intervals though, but I don't think you can trigger them directly from scene changes. (but there are solutions other than KARMA for this. You would want to look into the sequencer's RPPR system too which allows you to assign patterns to a key and trigger them whilst playing)

can it give more possibility in a combi than keyzone and velocity zone? like using cc to switch sounds, or automatically switch sounds by ge parameters...?

I don't know what you mean by switching sounds? there is a workaround that uses KARMA as a sound switch to switch effectively between two different routing setups in a single combi. There is also KARMA Wavesequencing which changes the waveform for each note or similar, I don't know if that can be programmed conditionally or do anything more interesting than rhythmic phrasing.

can it detect the chord type i am playing?

Yes, that is a part of how a lot of the GEs work.

can it change the split point of a combi like logic's mainstage?

KORG's combis don't have a straight 'split point'. They have a lot more flexible system where each timbre can have its own key and velocity 'zones'. they can overlap and whatever. Much much more powerful than a single 'split point'. I don't think KARMA can modulate that though.

can it play countermelody between my playing?
can it play harmony line to my right hand melody, according to the chord played with left hand?

Yes, although I haven't tried it personally or found any combis that do it on my KARMA workstation. I seem to remember seeing Stephen Kay doing this on an OASYS demo though.

[newtonlkh]

thanks very much for the info, I think I can conclude that karma is not my cup of tea...

Newton

[X-Trade]

What exactly are you looking for?

It sounds like some of the features you are looking for are still achievable through other means on the M3, for example through RPPR.

KARMA is still a very powerful way of transforming note data for a variety of different purposes - arpeggios, auto-acompaniment, chord movement, harmonisation... It is much more powerful and musical than any simple polyphonic 'arpeggiator' system you'll find.

[EJ2]

Here's an old MP3 of a song called Pastoralia from my red Karma ETM collection. It's all KARMA driving this combi which was recorded live in one take. I wouldn't exactly say this fits the "electronic" description, but somewhere in between. Just the same, it illustrates that KARMA is not tied to electronic/dance/trance genres.

http://www.soundclick.com/player/single ... i&newref=1

In addition, there are quite a number of KARMA-fied combi in all workstations with KARMA onboard - Karma, OASYS, & M3 - which can easily be categorized as jazz (with solid horn lines), country, RnB, cinematic/symphonic, orchestral etc. Some of those are in the Korg presets and in Karma Lab's collections (as well as my old material). I would guess that some KARMA users might be of the "electro-tech" fans, but there are quite a few whose tastes run the gamut. KARMA can and does work well for those other styles. To be sure, KARMA is absolutely not designed for electronic music only. It is extremely versatile for all genres.
Cheers,
Jim

[BasariStudios]

To cut things short i think he is looking for an arranger, KARMA is great and
everything but some of the features you want wont be able to use in KARMA.
Evrything else EJ and XTrade said. The other thing about KARMA is you cant
create your own GEs on the machine, you need a software for that.

[newtonlkh]

listened to your track. I think, for my experience with electronic music, i cannot distinguish karma from arpeggiators...

what i hope:

i hope basslines to know your scale instead of playing parallel patterns
it is ok for me to specify to key i am in, better is you can change it on the fly.
the parallel chord changes of many electronic music is not for me

i hope the regions of combis to act dynamically, like i can play comping patterns by right hand, but when I play lead, the comping can go automatic using the chord of my left hand, following the rhythm i played
and i can go back playing comping after to solo, perhaps introducing new rhythm

just some ideas of a perfect world... probably what i'm hoping is not quite realistic, at least to the technology today...?

in fact we should be satisfied with what we have and make great use with that, instead of thinking "if only..."

[BasariStudios]

But there is a lot more to KARMA then what it is said in here...this is not even
0.5% only of the name of the whole concept...KARMA can have different NTT
tables which can be edited or fixed with the KM3 software...it doesnt necesarilly
have to be parallell, chord changes can be done as on arrangers too.

[ricard]

KARMA can be set up for strumming patterns or even to allow you to play a chord with your right hand and strum it by pressing any range of keys in the left hand.

Do you know any program or combination still set up like that you say. It would be very useful for me, but I find too tedious program KARMA. I tried time ago to control strumming with the joistick and I did it but the result was not so great as I expect.

Thanks.

[snowbrow]

A slightly off the beam thought which I hope you don't feel drifts too far from this thread, as you're wondering about the uses for Karma ...
Outside of the electronica thing or even the instrument emulation is the possiblility of Karma being used as a springboard for new musical ideas. Remember those old tricks for breaking yourself out of your normal writing habits, like: set your quantise settings to a weird value, pick a random sound, press record on the sequencer and then dust your piano keys with a brush? Just one of a number of ways you could stumble across new ideas - well, Karma can be used as an extension of that sort of approach. Throw the Karma patterns at some sound they were never meant for, mess up the parameters, swap them around. Okay, 95 per cent of the time it'll sound godawful, but the other 5 per cent may give you a good idea or starting point. I find Karma seems to relish that kind of vandalism ...
okay, back into my box now.

[Johnny Puperze]

karma CAN be powerful, but from my limited use of it i also think the results are too arpeggiatesque for my needs and if i was using it, it would be more for program changes, wave sequencing or midi control change modulations and nothing note pattern related

if i want to approach things differently i prefer programming such things in an event editor, as you have much more control over everything and it doesnt sound like an arpeggiator if you dont want it to.

step recording works aswell and control changes could even be recorded the good old way manually using one of the many realtime control options the m3 has to offer

of course this is inacceptable in live situations
but even if you are going to use it live, you still have to prepare karma in order to make it usable for your songs- so you might aswell prepare your realtime controls (or rppr patterns if you have to incorporate parts which would truly be impossible to play by hand)

i hope i don´t sound too negative, since i really respect Kay´s work- and i think karma is a great feature for the m3, but i dont share the opinion that it is the revolutionary über-mega super tool, which revolutionized the music making and i personally prefer stuff like a yamaha qy700, rm1x or rs7000, which allow arranger keyboard like, self programmed, transposable by played chords, "auto accompany" sequences, which can be altered in (midi) parameters like note offset, gate time, velocity, stretch length, nudge notes forward/backwards in the grid, swing /// and unison, octaver, harmonize for audio - everything in realtime for each track individually.

having said that, i "only" own the "game boy version" (qy70), which only offers realtime alteration for swing and velocity modulation, though most of the other midi tasks can still be done destructively in one submenue, which gives access to all processing functions

[BasariStudios]

but i dont share the opinion that it is the revolutionary über-mega super tool, which revolutionized the music making and i personally prefer stuff like a yamaha qy700, rm1x or rs7000,

None of us that actually Master KARMA to a point would agree with that and
we all know that it is revolutionary, not based on opinion but a fact.

which allow arranger keyboard like, self programmed, transposable by played chords, "auto accompany" sequences, which can be altered in (midi) parameters like note offset, gate time, velocity, stretch length, nudge notes forward/backwards in the grid, swing /// and unison, octaver, harmonize for audio - everything in realtime for each track individually.

That can all be done with KARMA with one one difference, with much much
more additions and new ideas and experiments to it.

I dont think you fully understand the concept of KARMA or maybe i dont
actually understand your questions. Once you talk about KARMA, once you
talk about Arranger and once you talk about Sequencing which none of
those things are related to each other...KARMA is for playing LIVE and also
Arranger...Sequencing is something permanent that you CANT change.
I dont know what Yamaha qy700, rm1x or rs7000 have to do anything with
playing live, arent the all Sequencers? And if thats what you are looking for
then M3 can do that too with light years ahead of the above mentioned and
also KARMA to its full potential use together with the sequencer.
It all deppends on your need and use and also knowledge and experience.

[BasariStudios]

Take a look of this simple videos i made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Khh21CPKXY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaQQ0cXLEJY
And even this, even thought it might not be your kind of music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEWfhmVj9fI

All those chords and harmonies are trigerred live, nothing is PRESequenced,
they are trigerred by pressing pads or keys, like on an Arranger.
Soon i will post a video how you can use M3 and KARMA to play Country music
too and songs like You Are my Sunshine and Stand by Me same like on an Arranger.
But those are all created from scratch with KM3 Software and it needs a lot of
knowledge about the Software but it cant be done. Before you said that before
you go play live you need to work on it and set it up, who and what machine doesnt.
I dont know what is the point of a Ready Machine to just go and play and i dont
think anyone in the world can make such a thing.